


What Is It If Not Destiny?

by im_ashamed



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 00:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7736731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_ashamed/pseuds/im_ashamed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After hundreds of years Kouga finds Kagome again.<br/>The world would not return her to him only to tear her away again. (You  mean like it did that first time?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As the years mounted, so did Kouga's odds of living through them. He had thought he would be lucky to make it through four centuries. His father barely got three. But things changed. Less wars and more food. Medicine was one thing, but the theories behind it—they changed the way magic was done. Demons got less violent as humans did, and stealthier as their cities expanded. The capital moved once, and then again. Kouga moved with it.

He was sitting on his motorcycle, watching the light go from yellow to red to green, inching along in the morning rush, or stand still more like, when a trio of girls passed him. Something about them kicked his heart into overdrive. Heat rose in his body and a sweat broke across him before he could think. 

A car horn blared in his ear and his bike leapt forward. He sped up the street and turned the corner hard. He pulled over to the curb, and now he could see the girls from the front. 

It was her uniform. 

He got off his bike, and hooked a little bundle over the handles. Anti-theft charm. 

He left his helmet on as he followed the girls, but after a moment thought better of it and took it off. He no longer looked like a high schooler, clearly in his mid-twenties to a human, and it might serve him better to play up his looks and down his sketchiness.

Still, they didn’t notice him until he stopped them just outside their school.

“Excuse me, does a Kagome Higurashi go here?”

The girls seemed unperturbed by his sudden appearance, but they didn’t answer right away.

“There’s a Higurashi in my homeroom,” Said a girl with big eyes and an unfortunate perm. “But he’s a guy.”

Another girl elbowed her. “A cute guy.” She said, with glee.

Bad perm blushed. “Shut up.”

The third girl wrapped an arm around perm’s shoulders and said, “Come back in a few years, and maybe you’ll find _Mrs_. Higurashi.”

Something clicked in Kouga’s mind. The woman’s scent was familiar, but not enough. He could feel something within her, brewing to the boiling point.

He smiled with just a hint of fang, the most charming look in his arsenal. “Give her my regards.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

A few years passed, and then a few more. Ayame is up in Okinawa, trying to figure out why every demon in Japan is going stir crazy. Kouga knew, but he couldn’t say. He had been to the shrine once or twice, a visitor with an important prayer. He doesn’t dare do more for fear of what it might do to the timeline. He wants to protect not her but her path. She must do whatever it is she does to reach the past, so that they can meet. She did not know him when he first met her, which means she can not know him now.

Words like _before_ and _after_ lose their meaning, and his hands move on auto piolt as he tries to work out his own meaning, weaving charms of misdirection to place near the shrine. He’s sure they must be different for her, her own timeline must seem straighter to her. 

He has been to her grave. He was there when they buried her. The amount of people who were is staggering, yet their numbers did not lessen the grief. 

He helped bury the half-breed too. It was a long time later, when only demons remembered those feudal years when the shards had been just one more thing to fight over. There was no satisfaction in the act. It had simply felt like the right thing to do.

Now anger flares to life in his chest, white hot and spiked. Inuyasha is not here. Perhaps he can jump through time, but he is not here now, and for a second Kouga thinks _I could have her._

His phone buzzes and when he sees Ayame’s name he only considers not answering for a second. 

“It’ll be a miracle if they don’t kick me out of this hotel.” No hello, no what’s up, she knows he has caller id, she’s known him for centuries. 

“Are you burning incense?”

“No, but I keep brining the lords here to talk, uncommon ground and all, and I think they think I’m a sex worker.”

“At least it’s not incense.”

“That was one time!”

He needles her about it a little more. He and Ayame have learned the art of hashing and re-hashing an argument until it becomes affection. They have been together a long time. Maybe not always on the same continent, but together. A bond of clans and time. 

He stares at the flower posey in his hands as Ayame lists the kitchsy, ‘I-totally-went-to-Okinawa’ gifts she’s seen around, in case he wants one. He has come to appreciate her after the war, after Kagome.

Suddenly it is before Kagome again and he is young and inexperienced and he wants her and he knows that that desire, that _need_ , is enough to conquer anything.

“I’ll probably get back around two.” Ayame continues. “You want to get dinner on Thursday? Maybe take the whole pack out.”

“Sure.” He says.

“Can you make the reservation at Loretta’s? Maybe just rent the whole place.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you. I’ll see you soon.”

“Love you.”

She hangs up and he realizes he has no idea what she just said.


	3. Chapter 3

After that he tries to put it out of his mind, and he does too good a job.

The twenty four hour news explodes when some huge, murky THING is seen flying over Tokyo’s streets. Ayame faces goes so red Kouga swears he can see numbers clicking across her cheeks. As soon as they know that Inuyasha has it taken care of-and, man, is his face like a shot to the gut, far worse than seeing a ghost-Ayame detonates.

“You knew!” She screams, right there in the living room where anyone can hear if they want. “You know this was her era, you must have known!”

“How could I have known?” He yells back, and the lie burns in his throat.

Ayame throws her hands into the air. “You must have felt it!”

“We all felt it!”

“But you knew what it was. How many of us spent time around her back then? How many of us were-were touching her?!”

Kouga takes a deep breath and sits down at the table. “Is this because you’re jealous? Because—“ He doesn’t get a word farther. Fire blazes in her eyes and Kouga feels like he just cut the blue wire.

“I am not a school girl! I don’t give a shit about your stupid crush! You should have told me that the goddamn SHIKON JEWEL is here causing havoc! I don’t-I don’t-“ She grabs him by the shoulders and throws him the the ground. He’s so shocked that he just falls. 

“GET OUT!” The words are distorted with the intensity of her roar, and the sound sends people scurrying out of their rooms. They all pretend to hold the values humans now hold, about avoiding bloodshed and protecting innocents, but the animals rest uneasy beneath their skin.

Kouga gets. Ginta grabs his arm, tries to stop him for a second, but Kouga shrugs him off. 

“Let her cool down.” He whispers, and then he leaves. He doesn’t get his bike, or even his shoes, just runs. Runs and runs and runs.

Sometimes, if he runs long enough, he can feel his muscles throb around the places where the shard used to be. He’ll never be faster than he was with those shards, and no matter what platitudes people spew about ‘honest sweat’ and ‘the pain of a job well done’ that angers him. What Kagome did-what she’s going to do?-had he not loved her so much he may not have let her. He would have taken that jewel for himself and perhaps finally satiated his need to run so fast he falls off the edge of the horizon.


	4. Chapter 4

He thought smoothing things over with Ayame would be easy. God knows they’ve fought before over the years, but this is different. She refuses to makes up. Refuses to allow her feelings to be soothed. 

They’ve fought enough that he knows he can not work around that.

But today he’s decided not to think about that.

The well is closed. He went to the shrine and he could feel the lack the second he walked in. The feeling of infinity, like standing on the highest floor and staring down down down, is gone. 

He leans against his bike and watches as kids trickle out of the school.

“Kouga!”

His heart misses his throat and smacks into the roof of his mouth. He can’t reply. He never expected her to recognize him. Nor run right up to him. For a moment he just stands there, dazed. For her it must have only been a few days, yet he was so sure she wouldn’t recognize him.

He always wondered if she thought about him while he was away.

He has never gotten a better answer than the way she is beaming at him now

“How did you get here?”

He smiles. “I waited.”

Kagome blinks, taken aback. “You mean you…You’ve been alive all this time?”

“Yup.”

Kagome glances at the girls behind her. They’re whispering amongst themselves, sending him pointed looks. Kagome introduces him with a practiced vagueness that he recognizes well. He too has grown proficient in the art of saying just enough to allay suspicion, without saying too much and bringing up more questions. 

That’s why he says ‘want to get something to eat’ and not ‘I love you’ first thing.


	5. Chapter 5

A dam has been broken. He comes around all the time, just because he can. He helps her study, or make dinner, or they just talk and he luxuriates in the scent of her without the whiff of half-breed hanging around. 

He feels young again, free of responsibilities. All that matters is him and this girl and getting as close to her as he can. 

Christmas rolls around and they walk the city together, appreciating the bright lights, pretending this isn’t a date, even though it can’t be anything else. Words flow easily between them. 

“I can’t feel my face.” Kagome says.

“I guess that means it’s a good time for some coffee.”

“What a novel idea!” Kagome replies. She links her arm through his and starts dragging him toward the cafe she has in mind. 

He pulls back a little, stopping her just under the awning. 

“What?”

He kisses her. He has had the time to contemplate thousands of possible senarios for their first kiss, and some were full of thunder and lightening and screaming declarations of love, but what’s better than the easy grace of this moment is the long, languid kiss that gives him hours to simply breathe her in. 

It doesn’t so much end as fade to her leaning against him, his chin on the top of her head. At some point she wiggled her hands into his pockets, and he can’t think of the last time he was this warm. 

She pulls back a little so she can look him in the eyes. “So, coffee. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't choose the ship life, the ship life chose me!

“How much longer do you think the boss will be gone?” Hakkaku asks, leaning over the back of the couch so his voice will carry into the kitchen.

Ginta walks into the living room, untying his apron and slinging it over a door knob. “I dunno. She was gone for four years back then, right?”

“Wasn’t it more like three?”

Ginta shrugs and joins Hakkaku on the couch. “Why do you ask?”

“I miss him.” Hakkaku rearranges himself so his head is on Ginta’s shoulder. “Can you believe we’re doing this again? Doesn’t he know it’s going to end the exact same way?”

Ginta frowns. “It’s hard to think of it that way, though.”

“But it is right? She’s in the past with Inuyasha, so she can’t stay here. It’s already set in stone.”

They don’t know what to say for a minute as they try to wrap their minds around how when she leaves in the future it will all be in the past.

“Oh, yeah,” Ginta says, “Dinner’s ready.”

“Curry?”

“Yeah.”

Hakkaku can’t hold back a smirk. “Maybe I’m the one traveling through time, ‘cause I could swear we had that yesterday—“

Ginta smacks him and laughs. “That’s what you get for making me cook two days in a row.”

Hakkaku is laughing too, and then he isn’t.

“What?”

Hakkaku fidgets. “I just-all of a sudden I thought what I might do if you were a hundred years away.”

Ginta wraps an arm around Hakkaku’s shoulders and presses a kiss to his temple. “Lucky us, we’ll never have to know.”

That’s when they hear the distinct sound of a key in the front door and they scramble apart. It has to be Ayame with the milk and bread for tomorrow morning, and displays of affection has been putting her on edge for a few months now. 

“Hey,” She says, tossing a plastic bag onto the couch before pulling off her coat. “They had that kind you like with the orange cap.”

“Really?” Hakkaku grabs the bag and roots through it. “Thank you.”

Ayame shrugs. “I’m telling you, it’s all the same.” She heads for the kitchen. “Is dinner ready?”

“Yeah.” Hakkaku says before leaning into Ginta and whispering so soft even Ayame won’t hear, “Lucky us we’ll never have to know what I would do if you left me to chase shrine maiden tail.”

“Do you think she’ll really take him back this time?”

There is no sure answer. Kouga and Kagome is a story they already know backwards and forwards, but Kouga and Ayame is still a messy rough draft with just a post-it where the end should be. It’s not so much their boss’ love life they’re worried about, but the fact that if the two leaders of one pack begin to fight in ernest—oh, there are so many awful possibilities. 

It’s enough to make you long for a story you already know the ending to, as though being prepared might make it easier to live through.


	7. Chapter 7

He helps her pick out her dress for graduation. He helps her in and out of the complicated ones, and kisses her in the changing room. Pecks on her back or her shoulders, perfectly innocent until she gets stuck trying to shimmy out of a tight dress.

She laughs and sits down hard on the little bench. “Why don’t you try pulling?” She says, sticking her legs out.

He gets on his knees and yanks the dress off her thighs, dropping it on the floor. She props her ankle on his shoulder and leans back, just enough to arch her back. 

How is it that going down on a woman in a changing room is more exciting than all out fucking in the middle of the woods? 

It’s Kagome. It’s always her. She’s something else, like french pastry when all you’ve ever known is convenience store cookies. Layered and nuanced, fresh and exciting down to the last bite. 

 ---

They sit in the food court, her dress in a bag beside her that’s overflowing with frothy tissue paper. She’s picking at her food, ripping her straw wrapper into tiny pieces, staring aimlessly at the windows. Her cheeks are still flushed, but the sparkle in her eyes is gone. 

“Are you alright?”

She startles as though she forgot he was there. 

“Whatever happened to Ayame?” She asks, appros of nothing. “Did you marry her in the end?”

“No.” He replies, and it’s true. There is no record of their union anywhere in Tokyo. One of the reasons demons lay low now is that it’s hard to keep their records up to date, especially if they don’t want the humans to be suspicious. Kouga isn’t even a legal citizen, hasn’t been in decades. 

He puts his hand over hers. “I was waiting for you.”

He knows she goes back soon, or she should. She could. But maybe, just as easily, she couldn’t. If dog-breath was enough to call her there, why can’t his smile be enough to hold her here?

“Are you going to come to my graduation?”

His smile widens. “Only if you want me to.”

Her hand slips from his. “Please don’t.” She winces at her own words. “It’s just that it would seem—“

He cradles her face in his hands, tender and honest where he knows dog-brains isn’t. “That’s okay. I would never make you do something you don’t want to.”

Tears escape her eyes and she kisses him. Her breathes her in and it feels like his chest is expanding, as though the world is widening around them, making space for this timeline, the one where she stays with him and his heart is complete.

That sense of possibilities expanding out into infinity is still there when he climbs the shrine steps later that week. He knew she would be out with her friends on the day of her graduation, and he wanted her to have that, but he couldn’t wait another day. He wants his life with her to start as soon as possible. 

He is going to ask her to marry him.

Her mother opens the door. “Kogua, hello.”

His smile must be blinding. “Mrs. Higurashi, I-“

“Kagome’s not here, I’m afraid.”

And suddenly he recognizes this feeling. It’s not optimism, it is powerful magic, flowing all around him.

His heart stops.

“I’ll just wait for her then.”

There is real pity in Mrs. Higurashi’s eyes. “No, darling, she’s gone to America to be with family. Maybe get a job over there. I don’t know if she’ll be back.”

If.

Kouga flips through a dozen emotions. He wants to throttle her. He wants to say ‘I’m a demon. You don’t have to lie to me.’ and then accept her pity. He wants to hiss ‘at least I don’t get shitty perms.’

He runs to the well, so fast she probably doesn’t see him move. The doors to it’s surrounding house are open, and he leaps over the stairs in his haste.

He arrives just in time to see the sky fade from the well’s bottom.

The final slap. 

Mrs. Higurashi holds him. “It’s okay, I miss her too.”

_Have you missed her for centuries? Did you find her again, only to lose her for good?_

Her tears drip into his hair and he lets himself be comforted.


	8. Chapter 8

No matter where they go, Ayame’s room always looks like a cave. A cozy cave, the walls covered in bright fabrics, the bed a luxurious pile of fur and fleece, the lighting warm as a crackling fire, but a cave none the less.

He comes to her on his paws, and then his hands and knees. He does not beg her forgiveness, merely kneels at the side of her bed, gazing up at her.

She’s reading a pulpy murder mystery, and under the blankets he knows she’s naked, but all he can see are her shoulders.

She lets him wait. She could leave him dangling for years if she wanted, but instead she finishes the chapter and presses a scrap of paper into the book’s spine. 

She puts her hand on his head and strokes through his hair to the nape of his neck. 

“You knew it would end like this.”

He sees no reason to reply. It’s a fact. 

Her nails dig into his scalp. He’s been living simply for the last two years, avoiding conflict because he knew it would upset Kagome. This pain is almost exhilarating, like a jet of cold water to the face.

“You knew, and you did it anyway.”

“I had to try. If you had a chance, any chance, to be with your true love, wouldn’t you try?”

She meets his eyes and he is shocked at the tears in hers. 

“Why do you think I let you return?”

He tries to hang his head, but she holds it up.

“You’re cutting it off.” She says, tugging his hair for emphasis.

“No.”

She nearly slams his face into her bedside table, stopping at the last second. His heart is pounding. If she chose to kill him now it would be within her rights. The pack would let her. The pack would help her.

And maybe he would rather let them, than face them now, after abandoning them as though he were a confused teenager again. 

“I’ll do it.” She says, but it doesn’t have the cadence of a threat. She means his hair. “Turn around.”

He thinks she means to do it right then, but she just wants to get dressed without him seeing. Then she makes him strip. He knows she is going to take him out on to the balcony the second she does, but it doesn’t make it any less humiliating as she chops off his pony tail with one deft swipe of her claws. She tosses it to the city below like it’s nothing more than a dead rat, then cleans up the rest of his hair with the scissors. Once it’s short enough she takes out the electric razor to finish it off. It’s not a full buzz cut, but it’s certainly unfashionably short.

To distract himself from the spring chill he wonders how long she has been planning this. Did she expect this all this time, perhaps? Was she just waiting for Kagome to appear again and then for it all to be blessedly over? When he said she was here, did she feel the same way he did as he watched the sky fade from the bottom of a well?

She hands him the broom and watches him sweep the last of his hair from the balcony. Only then is he allowed to come back inside. He leans against the balcony door, waiting for her next command, when she takes his hand and leads him back to the bedroom. 

She takes off her shirt, and the loose cotton pants she sleeps in sometimes, looking him right in the eye the whole time, daring him to make a move. 

“This never happens again, you understand? Or you no longer have a place in this pack.”

He wants to ask her why she even thinks it would. There was never another woman who caught his eye after(? before?) Kagome. But he knows that is not his line. He kneels again and he swears himself to her as though she were his lord.

She falls into his arms and holds him so tight he can’t breathe. He automatically starts comparing her hug to Kagome’s delicate touch, but he lets the simile slide out of his mind, and tries to compare her to something more apt.

An old book you have almost memorized, and yet that’s half the fun, giggles starting a page before the funny parts. Shocking twists so obvious you yawn as they happen, yet the same excitement sparks as you finally get that reference to Anna Karenina. 

Afterwards he watches her sleep. She somehow manages to snore curled on her side. Always has. 

He traces a finger down her cheek and wonders, _if you keep coming back to someone are you stupid, or is it destiny?_


End file.
